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Celebrating America 250 at the Grand Canyon and the American Southwest Globus Tours Canyon Country Adventure-Tour #AV Friday, July 10 to Friday, July 17, 2026 We were looking for something to fill our need to experience some of the America 250 Celebration in 2026. We were surprised when we were able to get last minute space on some of the Globus National Park tours. Thanks to our customers we are staying busy and this was a one week tour from Friday to Friday plus it had two nights staying at Grand Canyon South Rim and another two night stop at Lake Powell. This one, Globus Canyon Country Adventure is neat as the first day was a resort day at the Hilton in the hills above Phoenix. We were lucky to get a morning nonstop that was on time and lucky that they were able to check us in early when we arrived around 11AM. The first day was only a meeting at 6P with the Tour Director and we have a 7:30 dinner reservation for a table of two at the hotel’s upscale restaurant overlooking Phoenix. We are heading to do a jeep tour in Sedona on our way to Grand Canyon and then we spend two days with the Navajo as “hub and spoke” visits to Monument Valley, Antelope Canyon and Horseshoe Bend before heading on to Bryce Canyon for a night and an afternoon stop at Zion National Park before a last night at Treasure Island in Las Vegas to catch a plane. Tours can be fast paced, historic, cultural but many have diverse experiences that appeal to anybody. This tour would appeal to all ages including younger travelers who wanted to see all these sites but not “do it yourself” visits to the busy US National Parks, Indian Reservations and State Parks that are famous in this part of the world. Day 1 Phoenix Hilton Tapatio Cliffs Resort Friday, July 10, 2026 Hilton Tapatio Cliffs was a great arrival hotel as we had a resort day. This is a 600 room all- suite hotel was in the hills above Phoenix, Arizona. Taxi was about $40 to the hotel. We spent the afternoon in the 104 degree heat at the Falls pool but we had shade, a beautiful clean pool and Joshua who kept bringing us pitchers of ice water. Like I indicated in my introduction, we liked this tour as we got a resort day at the pool on day 1. Hilton Tapatio Cliffs had a great staff, older but clean rooms and a nice vibe. 6PM was the meeting with the tour guide and fellow tour participants. These are mandatory as the tour director talks about the rules, specifics of the trip, optional excursions and destinations. With Globus these always include a beer or glass of wine, if you are not in a welcome dinner destination. As this was not a dinner destination, we had a 7:30 at the Different Point of View restaurant at the Hilton Tapatio Cliffs. This restaurant has a panoramic view of Phoenix, so we watched the sunset turn to night while we ate dinner. This did not disappoint as we had a great meal and bottle of wine. Even though these bus tours are group experiences you can get a couple of nights away with dinner for two. Hilton Tapatio has a transportation system that gets you around the property as it is a huge hillside property. Overall, a good stop to start the tour. Day 2 Pheonix to Grand Canyon via Sedona, Arizona Saturday July 11, 2026 - 220 Miles Bags out 6:30A and on the bus at 7:30A. Breakfast is included with Globus Tours and this is supposed to be the best breakfast of the trip as we are heading into National Parks. Hilton Tapatio had a great breakfast buffet set up. We meet our driver Carlos and he has our motorcoach cleaned and ready to go. Our day will be a little longer as we are avoiding the “pocket fire” which is burning north of Sedona. 89a is closed in Oak Creek Canyon, so we are skipping a scenic highway and adding about 35 minutes of driving to reroute. That is the nice thing about escorted tours that unexpected circumstances (and they happen in travel) are the job of the tour director and driver as the tour participants are just along for the ride. Once we arrive in Sedona, we are doing the optional 90 minute Pink Jeep Red Rocks Rim Ride. As we arrive to Sedona, we are greeted by the red rocks including a Bell Rock scenic overlook stop. Sedona, Arizona is an upscale small town that has a reputation for metaphysical things including crystals and crystal ball readings. We stop at the pink jeep depot and load up. This is an optional paid excursion priced at $122 each including 15% driver gratuity. Most of the bus has selected the rim ride along with us where you go off road up into the red rocks along the old wagon train path between Sedona and Flagstaff. Bonnie is our driver, the commentary is good the driving is bouncy but safe and we really enjoy this adventure into the mountains of Arizona. After the jeep tour the Globus tour guide has allowed us an hour for lunch and suggested the Canyon Café (along with a 10% off coupon provided to the bus tours) as it is a quick service restaurant with a bar. We had a great Sedona red craft ale with a decent southwest grilled chicken sandwich. The TD announces we are making a truck stop bathroom break since we have added mileage with the road closure. Buses have bathrooms but they encourage you to only use those for emergencies, so they try to stop at least every two hours for a bathroom break. After that, we are 17 miles to Williams and then another hour on 64 north to the South Rim. Our tour director dropped us at Mather Point for our first view of the Grand Canyon. When we departed the bus and first saw the canyon, everybody was breathless and said WOW. While we stopped to view the Grand Canyon, the driver took the TD over to the hotel where he picked up all our hotel room keys. Globus brings your checked bags to your room and they came pretty quick at Yavapai Lodge where we are staying. Globus uses Yavapai East which are the nicest refurbished rooms off the rim. We have worked in tourism for over 40 years to we are shocked how empty Grand Canyon is. Grand Canyon is legendary for sold out space and early reservations, but tonight the house count is 80 rooms out of 300 at Yavapai Lodge. The tour director said many of these tours this summer do not have very many Europeans, Australians or South Americans. Our tour date holds up to 45 passengers but we are traveling with only 31 people on this bus. As soon as we arrive at the rim, we see deer and it is nice as we only see a dozen people walking the rim trail between Yavapai and the Grand Canyon Village. After our walk, we head over to the Yavapai Tavern for a couple of salads and a bottle of wine out on the patio. As we are at 7000 feet we are in long sleeves at 65 degrees. Restaurants are more “institutional” at park lodges but the food and bar is fairly cheap.

Day 3 Grand Canyon South Rim Sunday, July 12, 2026 I have to say that we had the most delightful day ever in the sparsely populated Grand Canyon National Park. It is sad to see our National Parks suffering but for us it was fantastic as the shuttle busses and park overlooks were half empty. In the morning Globus had included a Pink Jeep tour with a young naturalist speaking, who took us to the Grand Canyon geology museum and along the Trail of Time on the rim, to talk about what we are seeing in the Grand Canyon including info and stories about hikers, rafters and animals in the park. These guys had led hikes into the canyon, so they were familiar with the topography and facilities which were interesting to the group even though nobody was hiking in. We had a pretty mobile group so we did a two mile round-trip walk along the rim with commentary until we loaded up the jeeps for an introductory drive around Grand Canyon Village. This was the choice inclusion on this trip so a few people opted for the Imax Theatre instead of the walk. We are back at the hotel about 11A with the rest of the day to ourselves. We head to the market at Yavapai where they have a deli and then took the blue shuttle bus to the end of the line. There is a bus transfer station to the “Hermits Rest” (red) shuttle bus 7 miles into the west part of the south rim. We stopped at a total of 8 Grand Canyon overlooks that were even more spectacular than the ones we saw yesterday. This is not accessible by car, only the park Shuttle busses. The end of the shuttle line is Hermit’s Rest”. We stopped for frozen strawberry ice pops as Hermit’s Rest has a small snack bar and real bathrooms. We both agreed the ice pops really hit the spot on a hot day while we were looking out at the Canyon. After the round trip we walked up into the Village to see Bright Angel and we stopped at the Kolb Brothers photo studio which had a nice gift shop. We went further up the hill in the Village to the Hopi House where the architecture was as unusual as the Native American art inside. When we came out we were 20 feet from a rogue female big horn sheep that was showing off on the edge of the rim right in the Village. We took the blue shuttle bus to our room for a very well- deserved shower on a 94 degree day. By the time we got back the temperature is starting to drop. We have a 7:30 dinner reservation at El Tovar, in the fine dining restaurant. We head back early on the blue shuttle for a glass of wine on the back porch of the El Tovar hotel as the sun is setting. Dinner is fantastic and we are aware that we are eating in a restaurant that had been patronized by the likes of Teddy Roosevelt and Albert Einstein! French onion soup has been a signature item of the hotel since the beginning with the trains, so we split one of those. Gina had a pasta alfredo and I had a wonderful elk bolognaise. We finished the night with 2 scoops of homemade gelato including lemon and chocolate. The blue shuttle bus runs until 9:30P so we have to wait about 20 minutes for a bus but there are 2 “cleanup busses” running in both directions to pick up the last of us heading home as the Grand Canyon National Park shuts down. Sleep came easy tonight as Monday is bags out at 6:30 and on the bus at 7:30. Day 4 Grand Canyon to Lake Powell with a stop in Monument Valley Monday, July 13, 2026 - 308 miles Yavapai Lodge cafeteria opens a little early for our bus group. Breakfast is included with all Globus tours and again, Yavapai is a little more institutional than a regular hotel breakfast. Believe it or not, all of the National Park lodges are run by companies that do catering or food services at stadiums to give you an idea of the food level. When you sign up for tours with National Park lodges, it is explained that they are comfortable, but more like 3 star hotels when you are inside the parks. We have a three-hour run to Monument Valley, so our first stop is Cameron at a large Indian trading post at the entrance to the Navajo Reservation. Navajo girls run up to the bus with 5% off coupons as we exit the bus. This was a nice trading post and most people bought something at this very real Indian trading post. I bought a dream catcher as I have always wanted one, but thought you should buy something spiritual like that from real Indians. We are heading to Goulding’s Stagecoach restaurant where the Goulding’s landed with the Navajo and invited director John Ford and John Wayne to Monument Valley in the 40s to do cowboy westerns. The tour director shows a movie about the Goulding’s and history of cowboy and Indian movies in Monument Valley on the bus. Stagecoach, Fort Apache and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon from 1939 to 1948 were all shot in Monument Valley. We preordered lunch a few days ago as from the Stagecoach Restaurant as everything is organized by the tour director who visits these stops regularly. When we arrive at Goulding’s restaurant, we are quickly served a nice lunch, before the tour. We split a Navajo taco and a salad. Globus has arranged for an Indian fry- bread sample and a talk about fry-bread that is really more about Navajo culture. The Navajo Taco is made on top of a fry-bread with southwestern chili. After lunch, we load up with the Navajo guides to go into the Monument Valley on pickup trucks that the truck beds have been modified with benches to hold about 16 people. Some tour company’s like Gate 1 (that we see) do a “drive by” from the overlook at Monument Valley. Monument Valley is punctuated by various “named” stone mesas and rock formations. With Globus Tours, we actually go down onto the floor of Monument Valley with guides who make stops at a couple of overlooks and drive you closer to the monuments with an Indian crafts market at each stop. This is included for everybody on the tour. It is another 2 hours to Lake Powell but we make a quick stop at the Glen Canyon dam on the way in from Page. Lake Powell is only filled to approximately 23% of capacity at present because of the multi-year drought in the Southwest and lack of snowpack in Colorado. It is sad to see such an engineering marvel that has almost been defeated by global warming. The water from the Colorado river plateau serves the states of Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, southern Utah and even California at the end of the line. Lake Powell is a huge recreation area where people used to rent houseboats to drive around what was 186 miles long that has now been reduced to a trickle of its former water flow. It is nice to again be in one place for two nights as we arrive at the Lake Powell Resort about 4PM. Our keys are distributed by the td as we exit the coach and we are parked near the rooms while the bus driver starts unloading our bags for the porters to take to our rooms. Tonight is an included meal. We drew a 6:30 slot for dinner and we are paired in groups of six as requested by the hotel. We have pre-ordered (via the tour guide) either chicken, steak or salmon which is served with a salad and dessert (like a catering menu with a choice of entree) and drinks are extra. Day 5 Page, Arizona (Antelope Canyon/Horseshoe Bend) Tuesday, July 14, 2026 This morning was the highlight for many on the bus and high on my list. Antelope Canyon is what is called a “slot canyon” where the water has carved groovy passages into the rock over many years. We are back on the Navajo Reservation with a private Navajo tour company that is one of seven that can take you into this attraction. Cindy is our guide a spunky Navajo grandmother driving a big tire 4 wheel vehicle that holds 14. I am lucky enough to ride in the front seat so I have a nice conversation with our driver on the way home. Cindy has everybody adjust the settings on their phone cameras and has pre-set picture stops along the walk. This attraction is organized by the Navajo Recreation department, the same as Monument Valley and also very well run. We are on a tight schedule for arrival as each company gets exact time slots to take us into the canyon. Antelope Slot Canyon was definitely worth a visit as the monsoons over thousands of years have carved out a natural miracle. You are no longer allowed to take knapsacks as ugly tourist kids have done crayon graffiti and people even desecrated this sacred Indian site by scattering human ashes that required closure of the attraction until the spiritual leaders could literally exorcise the site. It is a pretty good walk as you walk through the canyon floor from beginning to end (about a quarter mile) and then take a staircase/walkway (about a half a mile) over the top of the site as everyone goes one-way. Those that could not walk long distances or do stairs were escorted back through the Canyon by Navajo guides that work at the destination to support the Navajo guide companies on-site. This day the forecast is up over 100 degrees (f) so we are packing our water bottles with ice each morning and taking precautions so nobody gets a heat stroke. The tour director today has flipped our times and we go directly to Horseshoe Bend (optional excursion $20 per person) which is a Colorado River overlook in the Glen Canyon recreational area operated by the city of Page, Arizona. We are still in the 90s and are blessed with a little cloud cover for this walk that is approximately 8/10th of a mile each way down and back to the overlook. We have a pretty good walking group, so almost the whole bus makes the walk with a few remaining on the air conditioned coach. We make a 1 hour and 15 minute lunch break with suggestions from the tour director who has been to Page, Arizona many times over a 40 year career. About 10 of us head to the Texas BBQ place for some brisket and a cold red craft brew and both were very good. Tours are interesting as you meet a bus load of nice people over the course of a week. You tend to meet everyone as you rotate around the bus and pair up for communal meals. It is about 104 by 2P when we return to Lake Powell so we take some time inside to check email and return calls, so we can cool down. We walk around down to the marina to look around, look for roadrunners (beep beep); we never see any but some of our traveling companions said they saw one or two. Gina and I have opted to skip the optional Navajo dinner and cultural show ($64 per person) as we have seen a lot of cultural shows in our lifetime. The next morning our breakfast companions said it was a very good show including music and dancing along with history and culture of the tribe. We get a chance to do some quiet late dining in the bar at Lake Powell tonight so we share a simple pasta and another Cesar salad. Interesting this resort actually straddles the state line between Arizona and Utah as we are near the 4 corners region of the USA. Day 6 Bryce Canyon with a stop at Little Hollywood in Kanab Wednesday, July 15, 2026 - 145 miles This is a shorter day so bags out is at 7:30 and “on the bus” time is the latest we have had at 8:30A. We stop to pick up the 3 people that took the helicopter ride that actually landed on a mesa so they could get out and sightsee which also took them around the lake and showed them stuck boats from the low water and other interesting sites. It is about an hour and a half to Kanab where the morning rest stop is Little Hollywood who’s claim to fame is building some of the Gunsmoke sets. I have not prepaid our gratuities as I like to do cash, so I walk across the street to the ATM. In the States, the suggested tour director tip is $8-$9 per person per day and the suggested driver tip (only for the days the driver was with us) is $5- $6 per guest per day. Both our tour director Craig Cherry and our driver are great so we tip $150 for the tour director and $75 for the driver. This is total for two tour participants for an eight-day tour. We can have you prepay these gratuities with your final payment and even up to optional tour selection about a month before departure. Little Hollywood is mostly a gift/t-shirt shop with some movie sets out back, so we are back on the bus in half an hour and off to Bryce Canyon City which is right outside the park. We drive through Bear’s Ears and Grand Staircase Escalante National Monuments which are sacred to the local Indian tribes but mining targets that have recently been reduced in size. Ruby’s is a large complex including the Best Western Bryce Canyon Grand Hotel as part of the complex. Ruby’s has a restaurant with a buffet and table service plus a snack bar with pizza, burgers and hot dogs so we have a very good pizza for lunch. We are back at Ruby’s later with an included buffet coupon for dinner, that comes with the Globus package, so we figure something different. After lunch we are dodging raindrops to see the Bryce Canyon overlooks. The bus is able to get right into the overlook parking to minimize walking but the tour guide has organized a walk from one overlook to another, so we have raincoats out. The bus drops us at one and will pick us up at another so there is a time to be on the bus at the first overlook or walk to the second on where the driver will pick up the rest of the group. We are back at the hotel by about 4P and the Ruby’s dinner buffet is on your own with a coupon any time between 5:45 and 9p. As this night we are on our own and we figure late dining, so with the rain stopped we are off for a hike. The tour director has given us all trail maps. Behind the hotel, we pick up a trail head that is supposed to head to “Ruby’s overlook”. We are not disappointed as we are at the end of Bryce Canyon so the hoodoos are close up to where we are standing and this is a lovely hike with just us two through the Bryce Canyon woods. After hiking along the rim for a quarter mile, we pick up a road that looks like it heads back to the resort. For me, this hike and private time on Bryce Canyon was one of the highlights of my trip. The buffet was excellent with two salad bars, choice of soups and quite a big choice of hot entrees starches and veggies. Globus meal coupons on included dinner nights always include tax and gratuity but drinks are extra. Day 7 Bryce Canyon to Las Vegas with lunch at Zion National Park Thursday, July 16, 2026 - 255 miles This is also a pretty long but very enjoyable day. We start out at Best Western Bryce Canyon Grand hotel. Bags out is 6:30 and on the bus time is 7:30. Best Western has a decent breakfast buffet and is used to handling the bus groups so everything is hot and refilled regularly with a conference room open for extra seating. All the busses at the hotel leave early, so hotels have to have a certain mindset to cater to bus tourism. Back to the room to freshen up and on the bus early to head out. The Mount Carmel to Zion tunnel is a 1.3 mile engineering marvel from the 1920s but has now been closed to motor coaches. The problem is only one large coach can pass so it becomes one-way traffic to move busses. Globus got thrown a curve as this happened after the tour was priced so (being an excellent company) they absorbed the extra cost to hire two smaller vehicles to take us through the tunnel and into the park. The tour director explained since Globus bought “box lunches” for us at the Zion National Park lodge, these smaller coaches can take us up the park shuttle road directly to the Zion lodge. The box lunch purchase also enables Carlos to get the motor coach all the way up to the Zion Lodge to pick us up after his two hour bypass drive around the closed tunnel. This also enables our bus to take the scenic (no cars/shuttle route) to exit Zion National Park. Craig is an excellent guide as I have researched Zion a little bit but he provides park maps. It appears each time he runs this tour he re-stocks things like that for the next tour so each couple gets shuttle stop info which really maximizes the short time we have in Zion. As we get off the bus, he heads in to pick up our box lunches that come with a decent sandwich, some fruit and potato salad. His suggestion is to ride the shuttle one stop to The Grotto where there are picnic tables. We decide to hike to The Grotto as there is a nice trail and it is only half a mile so we arrive about the same time as the group that waited on the park shuttle. After lunch we ride to the end of the line called Temple of Sinawava and start the easy River Walk the tour guide suggested but we turn around as it is too crowded. This is the first time we have experienced crowds, but Zion is busier as it is closer to Las Vegas and a smaller park than Grand Canyon. Basically, with Zion, you are on the bottom looking up where in Grand Canyon and Bryce you are on the rim looking down. We use our last hour and a half to get off at Angels Landing, Weeping Rock and the area around Zion Lodge to check out Zion National Park. This is a good group we are traveling with and everybody is back on the bus exactly at 1:30P as requested. As we all scattered around the park independently, I am amazed we have everyone on time. It is about 3 hours to Las Vegas with a bathroom stop at the Flying J. I make that point as sometimes the stops are cultural but other times, they are just bathroom breaks as the tour busses never go more than 1.5 to 2 hours without a break even though there is an (emergency) bathroom onboard. We arrive into Las Vegas about 4P to stay our last night at Treasure Island, Keys are distributed by the Globus tour guide and luggage comes up pretty quickly. Groups get checked in on prepaid rooms and automatically checked out so you have one less detail each day. We are off to the Farewell dinner at 6P. This was one of the nicest farewell dinners I have experienced as the (catering) food was very good at Treasure Island. Choices were, chicken with pasta, grilled salmon or sirloin steak which we had that was very good and came with beer or wine courtesy of Globus. This tour guide is very experienced and he had a nice activity where he asked people who wished to express what they thought of the tour publicly. My comment was that I went to see Grand Canyon and Zion originally but every single stop we made was interesting on this tour as it was an excellently sequenced and Craig was one of the best tour guides we had traveled with. Believe it or not, he had an I-Pod (remember those?) that he had curated with tour music from the 50s to the 90s so he had a song to accompany whatever he was talking about which nicely broke up the commentary and we listened to John Denver in the morning when we came out of the Grand Canyon or raindrops are falling on my head when we left the Bryce Canyon walk in the rain. I have sold Las Vegas for 15 years but never been there so we took a walk around and had a glass of wine at a couple of hotels. We stopped at Harrah’s to say a prayer for my cousin Linda (who was a compulsive gambler that passed early. Gina said Harrah’s was her Vegas home.), we visited Paris Las Vegas (which had no French wine), walked over to Bellagio for the fountain show which was underwhelming (Gina said it used to be better when her and my Mom went to Vegas with my cousin Linda) but the $20 wine was better at Bellagio and it came with snacks. Then we headed through The Venetian and across to The Wynn for the last glass of wine (that we should have skipped) but in my opinion was the nicest hotel of the bunch in the balloon bar. 4 ½ hours of sleep came easily as we set a 5A alarm for the trip home Day 8 Las Vegas to Home Friday, July 17, 2026 We heard a cell text ping about the time the alarms went off for a 35 minute delay from Southwest, that actually worked in our favor. We had one more set of Globus breakfast vouchers for Treasure Island which was not a buffet but rather table service in the coffee shop. We grabbed a cab from the taxi stand and paid the $30 flat fare to the airport. After the delay, the plane was on time and true to our mantra of 40+ years “You can sleep on the plane”. Summary Globus Canyon Country Adventure This was one of the best tours we have been on. It was tightly packed with sightseeing but had the two night stops, so it seemed more leisurely. It was great to celebrate America’s 250th with a trip to our fantastic National Parks. It was sad to see that because we are down 21.7% with inbound tourists that our national parks were fairly empty for our visit. As we talked with hotel, tour and park workers we were told “worst summer in many years” by multiple long-time hotel workers including our tour guide when we discussed zero overseas visitors on our tour bus, all Americans. It worked in our favor, so I rode half empty shuttles at Grand Canyon, got a 7:30 dinner reservation at El Tovar, enjoyed Bryce Canyon without any crowds and even Zion was about half of the crowd Craig said was usually there on a summer day. We joked it was the “rock tour’ as you are driving around looking at some of the strange rock formations made by mother nature. Water and wind have taken some of these spots in our great country and made them beautiful to see. We did see elk, deer, big horn sheep, buffalo, condors, eagles, hawks, raven, chipmunks, really big squirrels and other creatures along the way. I felt very welcome into the Navajo Nation as we toured sites on the reservation. The Navajo guides were friendly, the tours well run, somebody always offered to help with a picture and the food was good along the way including (according to my fellow tour participants) at the cultural show we did not attend. We (like many of you) are still working, so this tour offered us an action- packed way to tour 3 national parks, 1 national recreation area and two stops in the Navajo Nation in eight days. We departed Friday for a resort day in Phoenix and off-roading in Sedona, spent 2 nights up on the south rim of the Grand Canyon, visited Bryce Canyon/Zion National Parks and even walked the Strip in Vegas on one action packed trip in a week. We are heading home the following Friday, as we have to be at work on Saturday. Many of you may think you are too young for escorted tours but we had many traveling companions younger than us that all enjoyed touring with the group including a few multi- generational groups doing the tour together. The median age for most of these tour companies is about 55. You have to be pretty mobile to really take advantage of these tours even though they can make concessions for you (like the Navajo guides or skipping Horseshoe Bend), if you are unable to walk long distances. Some bus tours are long odyssey’s but many of them are shorter tightly packed itineraries like this where you see a lot of stuff in a week. There all all types of tours, like for example when we went to Norway, we had mostly one night stops to move through a big country. Just want a week in London and Paris with a host? We have that. Want a complicated tour of South America with intra tour air? We have that. Want a panorama tour that visits 6 European Countries in two weeks? We have that. Come talk with us about escorted tours and hosted city visits as Tour product is very broad so we may have what you are looking for. My last blog was Nova Scotia fly-drive which was a pretty complicated planning process. Want to skip the planning, swim in the Hilton pools or play mountain golf while you wait for your tour companions and then go up to the Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon and Zion NP? Call us about the Globus Canyon Country Adventure tour. This particular tour has two nights at the Grand Canyon South Rim and also two nights at Lake Powell, so it did not seem rushed but we did so much stuff it seemed like a longer tour at the same time. Because companies like Globus and their tour guides visit the parks multiple times per year, they know the secrets about each one and how to navigate the complexities (like the box lunch getting the bus all the way up to Zion Lodge), so you max out the time you have in each park. National Parks in the USA are great and we are very glad we visited to celebrate America’s 250th anniversary. They also can be complicated with wait times to buy tickets, hotels inside and outside the park gates, miles and miles of driving between them so an escorted tour can be the way to go. Overall, Globus is one of our deluxe tour companies. Breakfast is always included with Globus tours plus Canyon Adventures had three dinners and one box lunch included. Other meals were arranged, when necessary, but paid by tour participants and we were able to get three evenings on our own for private dinners. We feel Globus offers value for the money as you get planning services, transportation, hotel accommodations, breakfast and other meals with gratuity, luggage porterage, included admissions, local favorites, park passes and tours with base gratuity. Extra charges not included are four dinners (on this tour), tips for the tour director and bus driver plus airfare unless purchased from Globus. Even though gratuities are included in tours, we did tip local guides a little bit more than Globus as they all were excellent. I travel with ones and fives as I say if you can afford to travel, you can afford to tip. As a result of my generosity, people are very nice to me as I travel through the world and I feel I have good karma with weather and other factors. Globus no longer does airport transfers in the United States or Canada so airport transportation is not included. Call, email or text us to get information about Globus Tours 813-868-0007 info@vacationtc.com text 813-503-8759 Book your next trip with experienced travel agents that have traveled the world.

MONUMENT VALLEY Remember all the cowboy westerns with John Wayne? All shot here in Monument Valley with the Navajo.

Agency Owners John & Gina Rice

So how does this whole group thing work? On this tour, we traveled with a very nice group of people. In fact, on all 3 of the escorted tours I have taken we found comraderie with the other tour participants who were heading out across a destination to see multiple attractions in a short period of time. We are all up early and loaded each day as that is the only way to see all these sights in one or two weeks. As you can see from our group picture, this was a group of various ages and from our conversations (on the bus, at meals, during downtime at the hotels and while touring attractions or bus breaks along the road) a group of various backgrounds and on other tours various nationalities. We are all happy as we are having another great day. This shot is right after traversing the Zion - Mt. Carmen Tunnel at the entrance to Zion National Park. Before I took my first escorted tour, I was hesitent about the group dynamic. I have found, over time, that is one of the things I like about touring as it is always an interesting group. We have found ways to customize the experience so we get downtime including dinner for two or our couple’s afternoons away from the group, so we have balance.

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Celebrating America 250 at the Grand Canyon and the American Southwest Globus Tours Canyon Country Adventure-Tour #AV Friday, July 10 to Friday, July 17, 2026 We were looking for something to fill our need to experience some of the America 250 Celebration in 2026. We were surprised when we were able to get last minute space on some of the Globus National Park tours. Thanks to our customers we are staying busy and this was a one week tour from Friday to Friday plus it had two nights staying at Grand Canyon South Rim and another two night stop at Lake Powell. This one, Globus Canyon Country Adventure is neat as the first day was a resort day at the Hilton in the hills above Phoenix. We were lucky to get a morning nonstop that was on time and lucky that they were able to check us in early when we arrived around 11AM. The first day was only a meeting at 6P with the Tour Director and we have a 7:30 dinner reservation for a table of two at the hotel’s upscale restaurant overlooking Phoenix. We are heading to do a jeep tour in Sedona on our way to Grand Canyon and then we spend two days with the Navajo as “hub and spoke” visits to Monument Valley, Antelope Canyon and Horseshoe Bend before heading on to Bryce Canyon for a night and an afternoon stop at Zion National Park before a last night at Treasure Island in Las Vegas to catch a plane. Tours can be fast paced, historic, cultural but many have diverse experiences that appeal to anybody. This tour would appeal to all ages including younger travelers who wanted to see all these sites but not “do it yourself” visits to the busy US National Parks, Indian Reservations and State Parks that are famous in this part of the world. Day 1 Phoenix Hilton Tapatio Cliffs Resort Friday, July 10, 2026 Hilton Tapatio Cliffs was a great arrival hotel as we had a resort day. This is a 600 room all-suite hotel was in the hills above Phoenix, Arizona. Taxi was about $40 to the hotel. We spent the afternoon in the 104 degree heat at the Falls pool but we had shade, a beautiful clean pool and Joshua who kept bringing us pitchers of ice water. Like I indicated in my introduction, we liked this tour as we got a resort day at the pool on day 1. Hilton Tapatio Cliffs had a great staff, older but clean rooms and a nice vibe. 6PM was the meeting with the tour guide and fellow tour participants. These are mandatory as the tour director talks about the rules, specifics of the trip, optional excursions and destinations. With Globus these always include a beer or glass of wine, if you are not in a welcome dinner destination. As this was not a dinner destination, we had a 7:30 at the Different Point of View restaurant at the Hilton Tapatio Cliffs. This restaurant has a panoramic view of Phoenix, so we watched the sunset turn to night while we ate dinner. This did not disappoint as we had a great meal and bottle of wine. Even though these bus tours are group experiences you can get a couple of nights away with dinner for two. Hilton Tapatio has a transportation system that gets you around the property as it is a huge hillside property. Overall, a good stop to start the tour. Day 2 Pheonix to Grand Canyon via Sedona, Arizona Saturday July 11, 2026 - 220 Miles Bags out 6:30A and on the bus at 7:30A. Breakfast is included with Globus Tours and this is supposed to be the best breakfast of the trip as we are heading into National Parks. Hilton Tapatio had a great breakfast buffet set up. We meet our driver Carlos and he has our motorcoach cleaned and ready to go. Our day will be a little longer as we are avoiding the “pocket fire” which is burning north of Sedona. 89a is closed in Oak Creek Canyon, so we are skipping a scenic highway and adding about 35 minutes of driving to reroute. That is the nice thing about escorted tours that unexpected circumstances (and they happen in travel) are the job of the tour director and driver as the tour participants are just along for the ride. Once we arrive in Sedona, we are doing the optional 90 minute Pink Jeep Red Rocks Rim Ride. As we arrive to Sedona, we are greeted by the red rocks including a Bell Rock scenic overlook stop. Sedona, Arizona is an upscale small town that has a reputation for metaphysical things including crystals and crystal ball readings. We stop at the pink jeep depot and load up. This is an optional paid excursion priced at $122 each including 15% driver gratuity. Most of the bus has selected the rim ride along with us where you go off road up into the red rocks along the old wagon train path between Sedona and Flagstaff. Bonnie is our driver, the commentary is good the driving is bouncy but safe and we really enjoy this adventure into the mountains of Arizona. After the jeep tour the Globus tour guide has allowed us an hour for lunch and suggested the Canyon Café (along with a 10% off coupon provided to the bus tours) as it is a quick service restaurant with a bar. We had a great Sedona red craft ale with a decent southwest grilled chicken sandwich. The TD announces we are making a truck stop bathroom break since we have added mileage with the road closure. Buses have bathrooms but they encourage you to only use those for emergencies, so they try to stop at least every two hours for a bathroom break. After that, we are 17 miles to Williams and then another hour on 64 north to the South Rim. Our tour director dropped us at Mather Point for our first view of the Grand Canyon. When we departed the bus and first saw the canyon, everybody was breathless and said WOW. While we stopped to view the Grand Canyon, the driver took the TD over to the hotel where he picked up all our hotel room keys. Globus brings your checked bags to your room and they came pretty quick at Yavapai Lodge where we are staying. Globus uses Yavapai East which are the nicest refurbished rooms off the rim. We have worked in tourism for over 40 years to we are shocked how empty Grand Canyon is. Grand Canyon is legendary for sold out space and early reservations, but tonight the house count is 80 rooms out of 300 at Yavapai Lodge. The tour director said many of these tours this summer do not have very many Europeans, Australians or South Americans. Our tour date holds up to 45 passengers but we are traveling with only 31 people on this bus. As soon as we arrive at the rim, we see deer and it is nice as we only see a dozen people walking the rim trail between Yavapai and the Grand Canyon Village. After our walk, we head over to the Yavapai Tavern for a couple of salads and a bottle of wine out on the patio. As we are at 7000 feet we are in long sleeves at 65 degrees. Restaurants are more “institutional” at park lodges but the food and bar is fairly cheap.

Agency Owners John & Gina Rice

Day 3 Grand Canyon South Rim – Sunday, July 12, 2026 I have to say that we had the most delightful day ever in the sparsely populated Grand Canyon National Park. It is sad to see our National Parks suffering but for us it was fantastic as the shuttle busses and park overlooks were half empty. In the morning Globus had included a Pink Jeep tour with a young naturalist speaking, who took us to the Grand Canyon geology museum and along the Trail of Time on the rim, to talk about what we are seeing in the Grand Canyon including info and stories about hikers, rafters and animals in the park. These guys had led hikes into the canyon, so they were familiar with the topography and facilities which were interesting to the group even though nobody was hiking in. We had a pretty mobile group so we did a two mile round-trip walk along the rim with commentary until we loaded up the jeeps for an introductory drive around Grand Canyon Village. This was the choice inclusion on this trip so a few people opted for the Imax Theatre instead of the walk. We are back at the hotel about 11A with the rest of the day to ourselves. We head to the market at Yavapai where they have a deli and then took the blue shuttle bus to the end of the line. There is a bus transfer station to the “Hermits Rest” (red) shuttle bus 7 miles into the west part of the south rim. We stopped at a total of 8 Grand Canyon overlooks that were even more spectacular than the ones we saw yesterday. This is not accessible by car, only the park Shuttle busses. The end of the shuttle line is Hermit’s Rest”. We stopped for frozen strawberry ice pops as Hermit’s Rest has a small snack bar and real bathrooms. We both agreed the ice pops really hit the spot on a hot day while we were looking out at the Canyon. After the round trip we walked up into the Village to see Bright Angel and we stopped at the Kolb Brothers photo studio which had a nice gift shop. We went further up the hill in the Village to the Hopi House where the architecture was as unusual as the Native American art inside. When we came out we were 20 feet from a rogue female big horn sheep that was showing off on the edge of the rim right in the Village. We took the blue shuttle bus to our room for a very well-deserved shower on a 94 degree day. By the time we got back the temperature is starting to drop. We have a 7:30 dinner reservation at El Tovar, in the fine dining restaurant. We head back early on the blue shuttle for a glass of wine on the back porch of the El Tovar hotel as the sun is setting. Dinner is fantastic and we are aware that we are eating in a restaurant that had been patronized by the likes of Teddy Roosevelt and Albert Einstein! French onion soup has been a signature item of the hotel since the beginning with the trains, so we split one of those. Gina had a pasta alfredo and I had a wonderful elk bolognaise. We finished the night with 2 scoops of homemade gelato including lemon and chocolate. The blue shuttle bus runs until 9:30P so we have to wait about 20 minutes for a bus but there are 2 “cleanup busses” running in both directions to pick up the last of us heading home as the Grand Canyon National Park shuts down. Sleep came easy tonight as Monday is bags out at 6:30 and on the bus at 7:30. Day 4 Grand Canyon to Lake Powell with a stop in Monument Valley Monday, July 13, 2026 - 308 miles Yavapai Lodge cafeteria opens a little early for our bus group. Breakfast is included with all Globus tours and again, Yavapai is a little more institutional than a regular hotel breakfast. Believe it or not, all of the National Park lodges are run by companies that do catering or food services at stadiums to give you an idea of the food level. When you sign up for tours with National Park lodges, it is explained that they are comfortable, but more like 3 star hotels when you are inside the parks. We have a three-hour run to Monument Valley, so our first stop is Cameron at a large Indian trading post at the entrance to the Navajo Reservation. Navajo girls run up to the bus with 5% off coupons as we exit the bus. This was a nice trading post and most people bought something at this very real Indian trading post. I bought a dream catcher as I have always wanted one, but thought you should buy something spiritual like that from real Indians. We are heading to Goulding’s Stagecoach restaurant where the Goulding’s landed with the Navajo and invited director John Ford and John Wayne to Monument Valley in the 40s to do cowboy westerns. The tour director shows a movie about the Goulding’s and history of cowboy and Indian movies in Monument Valley on the bus. Stagecoach, Fort Apache and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon from 1939 to 1948 were all shot in Monument Valley. We preordered lunch a few days ago as from the Stagecoach Restaurant as everything is organized by the tour director who visits these stops regularly. When we arrive at Goulding’s restaurant, we are quickly served a nice lunch, before the tour. We split a Navajo taco and a salad. Globus has arranged for an Indian fry-bread sample and a talk about fry-bread that is really more about Navajo culture. The Navajo Taco is made on top of a fry-bread with southwestern chili. After lunch, we load up with the Navajo guides to go into the Monument Valley on pickup trucks that the truck beds have been modified with benches to hold about 16 people. Some tour company’s like Gate 1 (that we see) do a “drive by” from the overlook at Monument Valley. Monument Valley is punctuated by various “named” stone mesas and rock formations. With Globus Tours, we actually go down onto the floor of Monument Valley with guides who make stops at a couple of overlooks and drive you closer to the monuments with an Indian crafts market at each stop. This is included for everybody on the tour. It is another 2 hours to Lake Powell but we make a quick stop at the Glen Canyon dam on the way in from Page. Lake Powell is only filled to approximately 23% of capacity at present because of the multi-year drought in the Southwest and lack of snowpack in Colorado. It is sad to see such an engineering marvel that has almost been defeated by global warming. The water from the Colorado river plateau serves the states of Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, southern Utah and even California at the end of the line. Lake Powell is a huge recreation area where people used to rent houseboats to drive around what was 186 miles long that has now been reduced to a trickle of its former water flow. It is nice to again be in one place for two nights as we arrive at the Lake Powell Resort about 4PM. Our keys are distributed by the td as we exit the coach and we are parked near the rooms while the bus driver starts unloading our bags for the porters to take to our rooms. Tonight is an included meal. We drew a 6:30 slot for dinner and we are paired in groups of six as requested by the hotel. We have pre- ordered (via the tour guide) either chicken, steak or salmon which is served with a salad and dessert (like a catering menu with a choice of entree) and drinks are extra. Day 5 Page, Arizona (Antelope Canyon/Horseshoe Bend) Tuesday, July 14, 2026 This morning was the highlight for many on the bus and high on my list. Antelope Canyon is what is called a “slot canyon” where the water has carved groovy passages into the rock over many years. We are back on the Navajo Reservation with a private Navajo tour company that is one of seven that can take you into this attraction. Cindy is our guide a spunky Navajo grandmother driving a big tire 4 wheel vehicle that holds 14. I am lucky enough to ride in the front seat so I have a nice conversation with our driver on the way home. Cindy has everybody adjust the settings on their phone cameras and has pre-set picture stops along the walk. This attraction is organized by the Navajo Recreation department, the same as Monument Valley and also very well run. We are on a tight schedule for arrival as each company gets exact time slots to take us into the canyon. Antelope Slot Canyon was definitely worth a visit as the monsoons over thousands of years have carved out a natural miracle. You are no longer allowed to take knapsacks as ugly tourist kids have done crayon graffiti and people even desecrated this sacred Indian site by scattering human ashes that required closure of the attraction until the spiritual leaders could literally exorcise the site. It is a pretty good walk as you walk through the canyon floor from beginning to end (about a quarter mile) and then take a staircase/walkway (about a half a mile) over the top of the site as everyone goes one-way. Those that could not walk long distances or do stairs were escorted back through the Canyon by Navajo guides that work at the destination to support the Navajo guide companies on-site. This day the forecast is up over 100 degrees (f) so we are packing our water bottles with ice each morning and taking precautions so nobody gets a heat stroke. The tour director today has flipped our times and we go directly to Horseshoe Bend (optional excursion $20 per person) which is a Colorado River overlook in the Glen Canyon recreational area operated by the city of Page, Arizona. We are still in the 90s and are blessed with a little cloud cover for this walk that is approximately 8/10th of a mile each way down and back to the overlook. We have a pretty good walking group, so almost the whole bus makes the walk with a few remaining on the air conditioned coach. We make a 1 hour and 15 minute lunch break with suggestions from the tour director who has been to Page, Arizona many times over a 40 year career. About 10 of us head to the Texas BBQ place for some brisket and a cold red craft brew and both were very good. Tours are interesting as you meet a bus load of nice people over the course of a week. You tend to meet everyone as you rotate around the bus and pair up for communal meals. It is about 104 by 2P when we return to Lake Powell so we take some time inside to check email and return calls, so we can cool down. We walk around down to the marina to look around, look for roadrunners (beep beep); we never see any but some of our traveling companions said they saw one or two. Gina and I have opted to skip the optional Navajo dinner and cultural show ($64 per person) as we have seen a lot of cultural shows in our lifetime. The next morning our breakfast companions said it was a very good show including music and dancing along with history and culture of the tribe. We get a chance to do some quiet late dining in the bar at Lake Powell tonight so we share a simple pasta and another Cesar salad. Interesting this resort actually straddles the state line between Arizona and Utah as we are near the 4 corners region of the USA. Day 6 Bryce Canyon with a stop at Little Hollywood in Kanab Wednesday, July 15, 2026 - 145 miles This is a shorter day so bags out is at 7:30 and “on the bus” time is the latest we have had at 8:30A. We stop to pick up the 3 people that took the helicopter ride that actually landed on a mesa so they could get out and sightsee which also took them around the lake and showed them stuck boats from the low water and other interesting sites. It is about an hour and a half to Kanab where the morning rest stop is Little Hollywood who’s claim to fame is building some of the Gunsmoke sets. I have not prepaid our gratuities as I like to do cash, so I walk across the street to the ATM. In the States, the suggested tour director tip is $8-$9 per person per day and the suggested driver tip (only for the days the driver was with us) is $5-$6 per guest per day. Both our tour director Craig Cherry and our driver are great so we tip $150 for the tour director and $75 for the driver. This is total for two tour participants for an eight-day tour. We can have you prepay these gratuities with your final payment and even up to optional tour selection about a month before departure. Little Hollywood is mostly a gift/t-shirt shop with some movie sets out back, so we are back on the bus in half an hour and off to Bryce Canyon City which is right outside the park. We drive through Bear’s Ears and Grand Staircase Escalante National Monuments which are sacred to the local Indian tribes but mining targets that have recently been reduced in size. Ruby’s is a large complex including the Best Western Bryce Canyon Grand Hotel as part of the complex. Ruby’s has a restaurant with a buffet and table service plus a snack bar with pizza, burgers and hot dogs so we have a very good pizza for lunch. We are back at Ruby’s later with an included buffet coupon for dinner, that comes with the Globus package, so we figure something different. After lunch we are dodging raindrops to see the Bryce Canyon overlooks. The bus is able to get right into the overlook parking to minimize walking but the tour guide has organized a walk from one overlook to another, so we have raincoats out. The bus drops us at one and will pick us up at another so there is a time to be on the bus at the first overlook or walk to the second on where the driver will pick up the rest of the group. We are back at the hotel by about 4P and the Ruby’s dinner buffet is on your own with a coupon any time between 5:45 and 9p. As this night we are on our own and we figure late dining, so with the rain stopped we are off for a hike. The tour director has given us all trail maps. Behind the hotel, we pick up a trail head that is supposed to head to “Ruby’s overlook”. We are not disappointed as we are at the end of Bryce Canyon so the hoodoos are close up to where we are standing and this is a lovely hike with just us two through the Bryce Canyon woods. After hiking along the rim for a quarter mile, we pick up a road that looks like it heads back to the resort. For me, this hike and private time on Bryce Canyon was one of the highlights of my trip. The buffet was excellent with two salad bars, choice of soups and quite a big choice of hot entrees starches and veggies. Globus meal coupons on included dinner nights always include tax and gratuity but drinks are extra. Day 7 Bryce Canyon to Las Vegas with lunch at Zion National Park Thursday, July 16, 2026 - 255 miles This is also a pretty long but very enjoyable day. We start out at Best Western Bryce Canyon Grand hotel. Bags out is 6:30 and on the bus time is 7:30. Best Western has a decent breakfast buffet and is used to handling the bus groups so everything is hot and refilled regularly with a conference room open for extra seating. All the busses at the hotel leave early, so hotels have to have a certain mindset to cater to bus tourism. Back to the room to freshen up and on the bus early to head out. The Mount Carmel to Zion tunnel is a 1.3 mile engineering marvel from the 1920s but has now been closed to motor coaches. The problem is only one large coach can pass so it becomes one-way traffic to move busses. Globus got thrown a curve as this happened after the tour was priced so (being an excellent company) they absorbed the extra cost to hire two smaller vehicles to take us through the tunnel and into the park. The tour director explained since Globus bought “box lunches” for us at the Zion National Park lodge, these smaller coaches can take us up the park shuttle road directly to the Zion lodge. The box lunch purchase also enables Carlos to get the motor coach all the way up to the Zion Lodge to pick us up after his two hour bypass drive around the closed tunnel. This also enables our bus to take the scenic (no cars/shuttle route) to exit Zion National Park. Craig is an excellent guide as I have researched Zion a little bit but he provides park maps. It appears each time he runs this tour he re-stocks things like that for the next tour so each couple gets shuttle stop info which really maximizes the short time we have in Zion. As we get off the bus, he heads in to pick up our box lunches that come with a decent sandwich, some fruit and potato salad. His suggestion is to ride the shuttle one stop to The Grotto where there are picnic tables. We decide to hike to The Grotto as there is a nice trail and it is only half a mile so we arrive about the same time as the group that waited on the park shuttle. After lunch we ride to the end of the line called Temple of Sinawava and start the easy River Walk the tour guide suggested but we turn around as it is too crowded. This is the first time we have experienced crowds, but Zion is busier as it is closer to Las Vegas and a smaller park than Grand Canyon. Basically, with Zion, you are on the bottom looking up where in Grand Canyon and Bryce you are on the rim looking down. We use our last hour and a half to get off at Angels Landing, Weeping Rock and the area around Zion Lodge to check out Zion National Park. This is a good group we are traveling with and everybody is back on the bus exactly at 1:30P as requested. As we all scattered around the park independently, I am amazed we have everyone on time. It is about 3 hours to Las Vegas with a bathroom stop at the Flying J. I make that point as sometimes the stops are cultural but other times, they are just bathroom breaks as the tour busses never go more than 1.5 to 2 hours without a break even though there is an (emergency) bathroom onboard. We arrive into Las Vegas about 4P to stay our last night at Treasure Island, Keys are distributed by the Globus tour guide and luggage comes up pretty quickly. Groups get checked in on prepaid rooms and automatically checked out so you have one less detail each day. We are off to the Farewell dinner at 6P. This was one of the nicest farewell dinners I have experienced as the (catering) food was very good at Treasure Island. Choices were, chicken with pasta, grilled salmon or sirloin steak which we had that was very good and came with beer or wine courtesy of Globus. This tour guide is very experienced and he had a nice activity where he asked people who wished to express what they thought of the tour publicly. My comment was that I went to see Grand Canyon and Zion originally but every single stop we made was interesting on this tour as it was an excellently sequenced and Craig was one of the best tour guides we had traveled with. Believe it or not, he had an I-Pod (remember those?) that he had curated with tour music from the 50s to the 90s so he had a song to accompany whatever he was talking about which nicely broke up the commentary and we listened to John Denver in the morning when we came out of the Grand Canyon or raindrops are falling on my head when we left the Bryce Canyon walk in the rain. I have sold Las Vegas for 15 years but never been there so we took a walk around and had a glass of wine at a couple of hotels. We stopped at Harrah’s to say a prayer for my cousin Linda (who was a compulsive gambler that passed early. Gina said Harrah’s was her Vegas home.), we visited Paris Las Vegas (which had no French wine), walked over to Bellagio for the fountain show which was underwhelming (Gina said it used to be better when her and my Mom went to Vegas with my cousin Linda) but the $20 wine was better at Bellagio and it came with snacks. Then we headed through The Venetian and across to The Wynn for the last glass of wine (that we should have skipped) but in my opinion was the nicest hotel of the bunch in the balloon bar. 4 ½ hours of sleep came easily as we set a 5A alarm for the trip home Day 8 Las Vegas to Home – Friday, July 17, 2026 We heard a cell text ping about the time the alarms went off for a 35 minute delay from Southwest, that actually worked in our favor. We had one more set of Globus breakfast vouchers for Treasure Island which was not a buffet but rather table service in the coffee shop. We grabbed a cab from the taxi stand and paid the $30 flat fare to the airport. After the delay, the plane was on time and true to our mantra of 40+ years “You can sleep on the plane”. Summary Globus Canyon Country Adventure This was one of the best tours we have been on. It was tightly packed with sightseeing but had the two night stops, so it seemed more leisurely. It was great to celebrate America’s 250th with a trip to our fantastic National Parks. It was sad to see that because we are down 21.7% with inbound tourists that our national parks were fairly empty for our visit. As we talked with hotel, tour and park workers we were told “worst summer in many years” by multiple long-time hotel workers including our tour guide when we discussed zero overseas visitors on our tour bus, all Americans. It worked in our favor, so I rode half empty shuttles at Grand Canyon, got a 7:30 dinner reservation at El Tovar, enjoyed Bryce Canyon without any crowds and even Zion was about half of the crowd Craig said was usually there on a summer day. We joked it was the “rock tour’ as you are driving around looking at some of the strange rock formations made by mother nature. Water and wind have taken some of these spots in our great country and made them beautiful to see. We did see elk, deer, big horn sheep, buffalo, condors, eagles, hawks, raven, chipmunks, really big squirrels and other creatures along the way. I felt very welcome into the Navajo Nation as we toured sites on the reservation. The Navajo guides were friendly, the tours well run, somebody always offered to help with a picture and the food was good along the way including (according to my fellow tour participants) at the cultural show we did not attend. We (like many of you) are still working, so this tour offered us an action-packed way to tour 3 national parks, 1 national recreation area and two stops in the Navajo Nation in eight days. We departed Friday for a resort day in Phoenix and off-roading in Sedona, spent 2 nights up on the south rim of the Grand Canyon, visited Bryce Canyon/Zion National Parks and even walked the Strip in Vegas on one action packed trip in a week. We are heading home the following Friday, as we have to be at work on Saturday. Many of you may think you are too young for escorted tours but we had many traveling companions younger than us that all enjoyed touring with the group including a few multi-generational groups doing the tour together. The median age for most of these tour companies is about 55. You have to be pretty mobile to really take advantage of these tours even though they can make concessions for you (like the Navajo guides or skipping Horseshoe Bend), if you are unable to walk long distances. Some bus tours are long odyssey’s but many of them are shorter tightly packed itineraries like this where you see a lot of stuff in a week. There all all types of tours, like for example when we went to Norway, we had mostly one night stops to move through a big country. Just want a week in London and Paris with a host? We have that. Want a complicated tour of South America with intra tour air? We have that. Want a panorama tour that visits 6 European Countries in two weeks? We have that. Come talk with us about escorted tours and hosted city visits as Tour product is very broad so we may have what you are looking for. My last blog was Nova Scotia fly-drive which was a pretty complicated planning process. Want to skip the planning, swim in the Hilton pools or play mountain golf while you wait for your tour companions and then go up to the Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon and Zion NP? Call us about the Globus Canyon Country Adventure tour. This particular tour has two nights at the Grand Canyon South Rim and also two nights at Lake Powell, so it did not seem rushed but we did so much stuff it seemed like a longer tour at the same time. Because companies like Globus and their tour guides visit the parks multiple times per year, they know the secrets about each one and how to navigate the complexities (like the box lunch getting the bus all the way up to Zion Lodge), so you max out the time you have in each park. National Parks in the USA are great and we are very glad we visited to celebrate America’s 250th anniversary. They also can be complicated with wait times to buy tickets, hotels inside and outside the park gates, miles and miles of driving between them so an escorted tour can be the way to go. Overall, Globus is one of our deluxe tour companies. Breakfast is always included with Globus tours plus Canyon Adventures had three dinners and one box lunch included. Other meals were arranged, when necessary, but paid by tour participants and we were able to get three evenings on our own for private dinners. We feel Globus offers value for the money as you get planning services, transportation, hotel accommodations, breakfast and other meals with gratuity, luggage porterage, included admissions, local favorites, park passes and tours with base gratuity. Extra charges not included are four dinners (on this tour), tips for the tour director and bus driver plus airfare unless purchased from Globus. Even though gratuities are included in tours, we did tip local guides a little bit more than Globus as they all were excellent. I travel with ones and fives as I say if you can afford to travel, you can afford to tip. As a result of my generosity, people are very nice to me as I travel through the world and I feel I have good karma with weather and other factors. Globus no longer does airport transfers in the United States or Canada so airport transportation is not included. Call, email or text us to get information about Globus Tours 813-868-0007 info@vacationtc.com text 813-503-8759 Book your next trip with experienced travel agents that have traveled the world.

MONUMENT VALLEY Remember all the cowboy westerns with John Wayne? All shot here in Monument Valley with the Navajo.

So how does this whole group thing work? On this tour, we traveled with a very nice group of people. In fact, on all 3 of the escorted tours I have taken we found comraderie with the other tour participants who were heading out across a destination to see multiple attractions in a short period of time. We are all up early and loaded each day as that is the only way to see all these sights in one or two weeks. As you can see from our group picture, this was a group of various ages and from our conversations (on the bus, at meals, during downtime at the hotels and while touring attractions or bus breaks along the road) a group of various backgrounds and on other tours various nationalities. We are all happy as we are having another great day. This shot is right after traversing the Zion - Mt. Carmen Tunnel at the entrance to Zion National Park. Before I took my first escorted tour, I was hesitent about the group dynamic. I have found, over time, that is one of the things I like about touring as it is always an interesting group. We have found ways to customize the experience so we get downtime including dinner for two or our couple’s afternoons away from the group, so we have balance.